October Is Always Dry

Based on data we track, October is always one of the driest, if not the driest month of the year.  So far in October 2016 it rained only two days, netting a whopping 0.5 inches of rain.  The grass in the yard is dying.  There's no rain in the long range forecast that I see.  So I turned on the water sprinklers in the garden to try to give the seedlings some moisture to help them grow.  The dry ground sucked up the water with quickness.

I also asked Tricia to turn on the water sprinklers in the landscaping.  The camelias are loaded up with buds and I'd hate to have them drop them when they'll be blooming shortly.  Same thing with the azaleas and Lily of the Niles.

As I walked around to the back of the house, one thing caught my eye - we have dead leaves on our tangerine trees - in several places, too!  That has me concerned as this hasn't happened before.  I normally don't even bother watering the fruit trees as it hardly ever gets this dry.

But we've got a lot of fruit on the trees that is ripening.  We love all of our citrus trees, and I certainly don't want to lose them.

As I look on the ground under some of the trees, I can see several tangerines that the trees are dropping.  It is way too early for this to be occurring.  I can only surmise that it is so dry, that the trees are jettisoning some of the fruit so as not to be stressed carrying them and nourishing them.

I picked up the fallen fruit and made fresh squeezed tangerine juice using them as I'm not one to waste the fruit.  I chilled it and it was so good.  Tricia sent some juice to Russ at college.  That dude loves fresh squeezed tangerine juice.  It's so tangy and tasty.

So I ran a water hose out to our mini-orchard and turned on the water very slowly. I went around doing my normal chores as the water soaked into the ground beneath the trees.  I can remember one time on a trip to California, we toured an area that had almond and apricot trees growing.  Water is scarce in California.  The fruit and nut growers essentially built small levees around their orchard and flooded the entire orchard, allowing the water to soak in to the roots very slowly.  I attempted to do the same.

Thirsty Citrus

Pools of water beneath the trees gradually disappeared as the dry land drank it up. The roots beneath the surface of the ground absorbed the water and by the next day the leaves had better color and had perked up.

Hopefully this will help take the stress off of the fruit trees and they will hold on to the fruit.  Seems like only yesterday I was whining about how wet August was and now I'm lamenting about how dry October is.